‘I’m suing Adams for the truth — it is not about money’

‘I’m suing Adams for the truth — it is not about money’
By Sam SmythIrish Independent
Tuesday March 30 2010

THE daughter of a widowed mother-of-10 murdered by the Provisional IRA in Belfast insists she is not suing Gerry Adams for money.

“It is for my mother,” said Helen McKendry, who plans to take a civil action against Gerry Adams following the publishing of a book, claiming the Sinn Fein president ordered the killing of Jean McConville.

Ms McKendry was speaking yesterday after a statement from Mr Adams said he “rejected absolutely” any accusation he had a role in Mrs McConville’s murder in 1972.

“It’s not for the money, it is for the truth,” said Ms McKendry, speaking about her legal action. “I want to get to the real truth. Gerry Adams has to come out and tell people the truth.”

In his earlier statement, Mr Adams also rejected the other allegations made against him in the book ‘Voices From The Grave’.

“The issue of the ‘disappeared’ is a terrible legacy of the conflict,” said Mr Adams. “A grievous wrong has been done to these families.”

Mr Adams went on to say that republicans had been working with the commission set up by the authorities in Northern Ireland to find the remains of the “disappeared”.

“The proposal to do this was initiated by me after I was approached by some of the families involved,” said Mr Adams.

In the book, written by Ed Moloney, Mr Adams is accused of ordering Mrs McConville’s death — among other atrocities including the Bloody Friday bombings — when he was IRA commander in Belfast.

Sinn Fein dismissed the book, saying that the allegations were not new and had been consistently denied by Mr Adams.

Author Ed Moloney said yesterday that it made him angry when leading republicans denied their former roles in the IRA.

“It’s pretty disappointing that every time something like this happens, the accusation is made that there is an agenda-driven effort going on here but that is just not the case,” said Mr Moloney.

Opponent

The allegation of Mr Adams’s involvement in the murder of Mrs McConville has been circulating for years but the claim that he ordered it is new, said Derry socialist Eamon McCann.

“This is not a wild allegation by a bitter opponent,” said Mr McCann, referring to the late Brendan ‘Darkie’ Hughes, the former IRA leader who revealed Mr Adams’s role before he died in 2008.

“They (Sinn Fein and Gerry Adams) are making a big mistake by dismissing it (the accusation) as coming from an alcoholic with a damaged personality.

“There are many people seriously messed up by the cruelty and the futility of what they did,” said Mr McCann about former republican activists.

“If they did it for a great cause, they might be able to live with it.”

There was a muted response to the allegations about Mr Adams, both in the media and from other political parties in the North.

However, some Northern politicians last night questioned if the revelations would be damaging to Sinn Fein in the Westminster election, which is expected to take place in five weeks’ time.

SITE MAP

The value of the Oral Tradition is its democracy; it doesn't give to an intellectual elite the exclusive right to shape a communal memory and the collective memory. It makes into a common wealth the story of our shared lives. It's something that we share in common – and it's like a collection plate into which we can all put something: our stories, our myths and the ease with which we are able to, in some way, cross boundaries. - Cleophus Thomas, Jr.

First Circuit Court of Appeals

May, 2013

“… we must forcefully conclude that preserving the judicial power to supervise the enforcement of subpoenas in the context of the present case, guarantees the preservation of a balance of powers… In substance, we rule that the enforcement of subpoenas is an inherent judicial function which, by virtue of the doctrine of separation of powers, cannot be constitutionally divested from the courts of the United States. Nothing in the text of the US-UK MLAT, or its legislative history, has been cited by the government to lead us to conclude that the courts of the United States have been divested of an inherent judicial role that is basic to our function as judges.”

“… the district court acted within its discretion in ordering their production, it abused its discretion in ordering the production of a significant number of interviews that only contain information that is in fact irrelevant to the subject matter of the subpoena.”

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